Ap­ple to launch iPhone 5se, iPad Air in March

SAN FRANC­SICO: Ap­ple Inc is on tar­get to in­tro­duce its next iPhone and iPad mod­els on 15 March, and aims to start sell­ing the devices in the same week, tech­nol­ogy blog 9to5Mac re­ported, cit­ing sources. Ap­ple, which will in­tro­duce a new 4-inch iPhone, dubbed the "iPhone 5se", and a new iPad Air at a launch event, is un­likely to take pre-or­ders for the new devices, the blog re­ported. The tech­nol­ogy gi­ant has hit a trough in iPhone de­mand. The 0.4% rise in ship­ments in the fis­cal first quar­ter was the slow­est-ever in­crease in iPhone sales since the phone was launched in 2007. The new 4-inch iPhone 5se is de­signed to spur iPhone hard­ware up­grades for cus­tomer seek­ing faster devices with­out up­grad­ing to the far larger iPhone 6s and 6s Plus screen sizes.